i am going to try to learn to be a person among people, bc i have to. it's the only way to survive the world trying to kill us all the time.

just being a guy on the internet who makes stuff and talks to folks, is not really compatible with that super unhealthy background noise.

so all this is to say, i am going to try again. i am going to try to be present without needing to fix or know about or be part of every single thing.

at 35, that still defines how i allow myself to exist.

i have been a knife. if i am to exist, i must always be useful.

this is of course untenable, swinging me far to the other side: i must protect myself from any and all possible harm by becoming invisible and unreachable.

back & forth forever.

i was raised by deeply distrustful and self-sabotaging people with no community around them, who made it clear to me my only purpose was to be useful (to them), and if i couldn't do that, i should make sure no one had to deal with me at all.

nothing ever fed my spirit so much as that community, and nothing ever hurt so much, either. pain in being present all the time; pain in knowing i had to separate myself or that constant presence would have killed me. my mental health was absolutely wrung out of me by the end.

i haven't written or played any ttrpgs in at least three years. there's a gaping open wound there even still, caused by my choices and those of others. i don't know if community in that space will ever be more than pain for me. i hope it can.

i am stubbornly trying to figure out what the balance is between total isolation and default mistrust, on one side, and on the other side turning myself into a sacrificial compost heap trying to hold space for hundreds of people at once.

i expect to struggle with these extremes as long as i live.

if we used to be friends on twitter in like 2018-2021 and i ghosted you:

1. it's not you, it's my broken brain
2. i'm sorry
3. i cannot promise to be present now, or the same problems will devour me again and i will cause more damage when i inevitably have to bail again